Blog

Welcome to the new Take One website!

Back in 1993, we were introduced to the Internet – The World Wide Web. There was a publishing company in Lancaster, PA that produced books for educators across the country. In addition to publishing, they wanted to show teachers how to use the Internet AND not be afraid of it.

What an idea at the time. It’s funny to look back now, as librarians thought they would be out of jobs, you dared not share any identifiable information and trying to figure out how to pronounce “@” were all key points of contention.

By creating a set of videos, Wentworth Publishing wanted educators to embrace the WWW and become part of it. This included a basic understanding of how to navigate and retrieve worthwhile articles and pictures.

OH – and video? That wasn’t even a consideration on our dial-up modems yet, as the best of the best speeds reached 14.4 bits per second. This means that downloading a 1 megabyte photo at the time would’ve taken about a full minute.

So, having to write about the Internet, we had to use it. We had to go to a local computer store and buy a special ‘serial’ card with a UART chip on it. They gave us the trusty 14.4 modem that connected to the card that I installed in my old 386 computer – no Pentiums here!

Well… Finally, after nashing teeth, yelling at the computer and lots of tech calls… TA-DA! The Internet. Back then, Netscape 1 was the browser of choice. And with it, we traveled to the University of Minnesota, where we were able to view documents and a few small photos.

It took forever, but we were actually communicating with a computer in Minnesota and viewing things on-screen. WOW! Our first website for Take One was built by our own Kevin Martorana with HTML coding in 1994. Some of the photos we found of our old website only go back to 1996, but it looked about the same.

And here we are today – over 24 years later and the Internet is now an everyday part of everyone’s lives. We can’t live without it. We stream HD video, we get instant access to weather around the world, we buy laundry detergent from our phone, and yes… We sell our business with an on-line presence.

Our new home on the web has all the bells and whistles of a modern day website. The look, the functionality and (hopefully) some of the ‘character’ that you’ve come to know from Take One. We love what we do and we love doing it for our customers. We hope you find this site as informative and entertaining as we do.